


Malice

by actuallypunny



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Implied Character Death, Injury, first work in this fandom, huh actually i dont really know, i didnt realise it was 3am and thats why it was so cold, i tried man, is it really graphic desc. of injury if i never describe the injury and only the feeling of it, just mentioned, link is a bit cocky ig, malice - freeform (???), mipha never actually appears in the story, my fingers went numb when i was typing this, these tags are so out of order i ought to be ashamed of myself, yea anyway have fun reading!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 22:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11300496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actuallypunny/pseuds/actuallypunny
Summary: Link had never touched the Malice in his life, and he never planned to. What would stop him now?Now with some re-written parts for ease of reading.





	Malice

He'd forgotten what true pain felt like.  
All those scrapes and scratches, gashes and stabs that were scattered on his body. They were nothing to Link. The wounds he’d sustained from monsters, careless blunders, and various falls; they left scars that marred his body like lightning in a storm.  
Those wounds could not even hold a candlelight against what the Malice did.

Though Link had heard of what the Malice could do, he did not know what it looked like, until he left the Plateau. When he scaled the Akkala tower, he'd not touched a single drop of Malice. Link slowly became cocky and overconfident in his abilities. If he could conquer climbing a tower surrounded by flying guardians and sullied by Ganon's Malice, surely he could handle anything, couldn't he?

He explored the Malice-ridden Hyrule Castle after filling in Akkala on his map. Climbing the structures and destroying guardians was great fun for the hero. Any bumps and bruises could be walked off; he always had extra elixirs in his pouch.  
A miscalculated jump was all the Goddess Hylia needed to put a big dent in his exploration of the ruined castle. 

Link leapt off the top of the second gatehouse without a care in the world.He pulled the paraglider out, and the air filled the cloth quick enough that he didn’t fall too far. Link glided towards the other side of the largest puddle of Malice he’d ever seen. He wasn’t paying attention when a guardian turret noticed Link's descent over the courtyard. He didn’t notice the turret aim at him, his own arrogance clouding his common sense. Link didn't hear anything past the wind whipping past his ears, the sound of the wind buffeting the cloth of the paraglider.

Suddenly, Link heard nothing. Nothing, but a high-pitched ringing in his ears, and felt searing, white-hot pain in his right shoulder. He vaguely registered that his stomach felt like it was lurching, before he fell out of the sky, and directly into the Malice.

The Malice is indescribable in feeling, but it is recognisable in appearance. It glowed a sinister magenta, with black edges that seemed to spill out at the sides, like a festering wound on the landscape, or congealed blood that couldn’t be cleaned off. It managed to be hot and cold at the same time. It dulled the senses, and also somehow managed to be acute in the way it inflicted pain on those that touched it.  
It cushioned Link's fall. That he could be thankful for, before he slowly sank into its surface.  
The Malice stuck to him, seeping through his clothes, and coating his weapons. Although it appeared like a thick, viscous goop, it went through his clothes like a gust of black wind. He felt it though his tunic, through his shoes, when it seeped through his golden hair, now stained deep purple. Through everything that touched it. The Malice prickled at his skin, like a thousand beetles were crawling over him, nipping into his flesh with sharp pincers. It was frigid, biting Link to the bone, and yet it felt as if he were submerged in the molten lava at Death Mountain itself.

Link shot up, gasping. A raw, guttural scream clawed its way out of his throat, as he struggled to get up, to get away from the Malice. His limbs were sluggish and shaky, and strangely heavy. It was as if the cold, dead hands of the damned were grasping at his arms and his ankles, dragging him back to the Malice to join the ranks of the dead. His shoulder that took the brunt of the laser had been covered in the goop, numbing and intensifying the injury at the same time like alcohol on an open wound. He couldn’t tell if this was for better or worse. The purple sludge gurgled and gripped at Link's boots as he trudged through. His legs were shaking as the Malice sapped away his life, his strength, and (substitute a better word here). It left only dullness in his limbs, and the grim reminder that death was upon him.

 _“Funny,”_ he thought, _“That I should be stumbling like a lamb, when I am close to perishing. Hylia must be beside herself with laughter.”_

He stepped off of the edge of the Malice, stumbling as he readjusted to the cobblestone of the castle pathways. Though he was out of the byproduct of the Calamity, it still clung onto his clothes and skin, like the parasite that it was. It slowly ate away at the areas it touched; such was the curse of Ganon. The hero stopped to survey his surroundings. The first gatehouse was directly ahead of him, and a small bridge to his right. He opted for the latter; Link would at least have a source of water near him to wash off the Malice that still tainted him. 

Each step Link took was in agony as his uneven gait agitated the Malice on him, and the wounds that were inflicted by the guardian turret. He cursed the corrupted sentinels under his breath.

Link reached the bridge and crossed over it, thanking the architects for building a ramp instead of stairs. He collapsed against the side of the bridge with a barely repressed yell when his sword and shield dug into his back. Beads of sweat rolled down Link’s forehead, he took this small window of time to inspect the thin film of Malice which coated his body. 

Some areas of the Malice started forming globs that appeared to be pulsing. Link stared at one of them that clumped on his right arm. Worrisome, but not as much as when a slit on one of the lumps opened, and stared right back at Link with an amber iris. He jabbed at it with his left hand, and it shrunk in on itself before vanishing with a puff of smoke. Link remembered seeing the Malice eyes around the ruined Castle Town. What was happening on his arm was the very same thing, just on a smaller scale.

Link carefully dipped his hand in the stream that ran beside him, inhaling sharply as the current tore at the Malice on his arm. The Sheikah Slate had told him the Malice was just water that was tainted by the Calamity’s awakening, surely the water should be able to wash this off?

That did not prove to be the case, as Link’s arm came out of the water looking the same as it went in, just wetter. Attempting to scrape the Malice off onto the ground didn’t work, it hurt him more than it affected its removal. Link sat back against the wall, inhaling sharply as his weapons dug into his back once again. Although the pain from them was infinitesimal compared to the Malice (which was forming eyes again) that covered most of his body, it was still a painful surprise when they pressed into his back. 

As the sound of glass crunching in his pouch reached his ears, realisation hit Link. He still had those elixirs, didn’t he? Sluggishly, he reached to his pouch and opened the clasp. He was… disappointed to say the least. Where there was meant to be three bottles of hearty elixir, there was only one instead, and a large scattering of glass shards of various sizes, stained with red. The other two bottles had been crushed when he fell into the Malice. No matter. One bottle was enough to heal him completely. Link gently twisted the cork off of the bottle (he didn’t have the strength to rip it out with his teeth, he was that weak), and downed the elixir in one gulp.

It didn’t do anything visible, but he felt the burn from the laser heal under the Malice. However, the Malice didn’t suddenly vanish, and that left him feeling distraught. He couldn’t free the He put the bottle beside him with a gentle clink.  
Link could feel the Malice crawling up his neck, and he shivered involuntarily. He was so tired, and he had nothing to do - the Champion of the Zora, Mipha, had already used her healing powers to revive him from when he’d picked a fight with the Moblin in Zelda’s room, and his Sheikah Slate was lost to the Malice he’d fallen in earlier. There was nothing to do but wait, and see what happened next. The pain the Malice inflicted on him was agonising, and it left him feeling drained. He wanted nothing more than to sleep at that moment, to escape the Malice which tormented him in the waking world. No guardian could aim at him here, and no monster in their right mind would walk the outside of Hyrule Castle when the guardians were keeping watch. What would be the harm in sleeping here?  
Link slipped into unconsciousness. The only thing that could wake him now would be Mipha’s healing touch, how it would bring him back to life, to the world of the living, and a world of Malice-induced suffering.

**Author's Note:**

> hey so this is my first time writing a fanfic!! i got the idea when i was exploring hyrule castle in-game, and stared at the malice for a bit. the npcs in botw dont really talk much about it, do they?  
> anyway, thanks for reading! reviews and criticism are encouraged, do let me know if something sounds off!  
> i couldnt think of a better title so rest in peace to that, hey


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